29 replies to this topic

[-Sky-]

Hi Trap. I am sorry to nag etc.

The Xisto Support Team is so slow and limited now..since velma left the team, support has been unbelievabley slow. If you guys complain that your support is small, then perhaps consider getting newer Staff to help with the Billing area support? In my opinion, I'd personally vote for haslip, SM rval and truefusion to help out. They are a big help in the community.

Please don't just close this topic and warn me for this suggestion.. :/

[rvalkass]

-Sky-, on Nov 22 2009, 03:20 PM, said:

The Xisto Support Team is so slow and limited now..since velma left the team, support has been unbelievabley slow. If you guys complain that your support is small, then perhaps consider getting newer Staff to help with the Billing area support? In my opinion, I'd personally vote for haslip, SM rval and truefusion to help out. They are a big help in the community.

The support team are all paid employees of Xisto (as far as I know) and therefore work regular hours. Us moderators are volunteers and work whenever we have the time I assume training is involved for the support staff to be able to create and manage accounts etc., so I'm guessing that is an issue with getting more staff. Also, I'm not sure if OpaQue would be happy with us moderators working as support staff, due to our unpredictable and fairly random hours on the forums. However, that's up to OpaQue - he really knows the most about all this.

-Sky-, on Nov 22 2009, 03:20 PM, said:

Please don't just close this topic and warn me for this suggestion.. :/

That'd be kinda pointless - who ever improves by ignoring suggestions? I think we all use support fairly infrequently (well, I don't use them a lot anyway) so it's hard for us to gauge whether it's working or not.

[Ash-Bash]

I would be happy to help out on no pay at all I just want to please people, Either be a moderator or support staff just to make the member happy and have an Easy hosting package. It seems that Nick ***< Don't know the name is the only support staff. I don't see why he doesn't recruit on the net and let people work from home.

[-Sky-]

Exactly, however OpaQue can also use it. Though I really do think Xisto need to employ more support staff.

[anwiii]

the only time i needed support was when i first got my hosting with my domain name purchased from xisto. i myself thinks there should be a faster response AND people who are able to understand the true problemsso conversations don't have to go back and forth without a solution in 1 or two days.

but i also understand that hiring 1 or more people will cost more money and when things cost more, the prices will rise or and the value of mycents will be less. or you just wont get as many mycents when posting.

ash bash, you don't need to be a moderator to be part of a team and help people.

as far as volunteers helping with support and billing, i am against that idea...especially a moderator of trap17 forums. people need to have a life too and when you open new areas for moderators to volunteer their time, it will take away their time from their original moderator duties.

the support system isn't perfect, but it's good enough in my opinion(with few exceptions) when trap17 members are getting their hosting and domains and xisto services free using credits through mycents.

although i haven't used anhy support tickets for 5 months now so many things got worse during that time. i don't know....

-Sky-, on Nov 22 2009, 10:11 AM, said:

Exactly, however OpaQue can also use it. Though I really do think Xisto need to employ more support staff.

[rvalkass]

anwiii, on Nov 22 2009, 05:25 PM, said:

but i also understand that hiring 1 or more people will cost more money and when things cost more, the prices will rise or and the value of mycents will be less. or you just wont get as many mycents when posting.

I'm not sure how big the support team is, or what the exact numbers are, but you're probably right. The costs of more people in the team would have to be met somehow, and I'm not sure exactly how that would be done - only OpaQue really knows.

anwiii, on Nov 22 2009, 05:25 PM, said:

ash bash, you don't need to be a moderator to be part of a team and help people.

True. Submitting reports on spam posts is the best way to help out. I get all the reports dropped into my emails, so if I'm on the PC but not on Trap17 for whatever reason then I can come on and sort out the reports as soon as possible. We also get them as PMs on the forum, so we get instant notification if we're online.

anwiii, on Nov 22 2009, 05:25 PM, said:

although i haven't used anhy support tickets for 5 months now so many things got worse during that time. i don't know....

I think most people are the same, which makes it difficult for any of us to judge for ourselves if things are getting better or worse, or not changing at all.

[The Simpleton]

I used support 6-7 times over six months and most of the times only Nikhil Patil was the one who replied. And the response was timely and supportive, just as it was meant to be. But I did begin to wonder about the size of the support team because everytime only one guy replied Well in the end it's OpaQue's decision to choose to hire more support staff, but even if he does, it'll take a lot of time to train them and make them efficient

[Soviet Rathe]

I've submitted support tickets many times and always got a response within 1-2 hours.. and they always resolve my problem
or should I say she? O_O
as far as I know there is only one person there and her name is Nik

[The Simpleton]

Quote

as far as I know there is only one person there and her name is Nik

Er...his name is Nikhil - Nik's just a nickname!

[OpaQue]

I understand that adding more support staff will make the response fast. However, I cannot guarantee that Fast Response will mean Speedy solution. Even having a good team still leads to confusion in managing support tickets especially for L2,L3 requests.

Presently, Most of the support requests are solved within 24 hours and its going smoothly. Previously I felt having more staff (mainly L1) was good but I was wrong. It only led to misunderstanding and confusion within the team and the work lagged like anything. Simple issues were delayed by 2-3 days. So now I hire very few but very experienced and good engineers. Our payment gateway + mycent calculations make the Sales part a bit more tedious.

The Support Load currently is managed very efficiently and we are not having any lags. My major priority is the security of Servers and keeping them stable and up to date. We are still a young company and as we grow big, we will surely add more talented people to our team.

We have one day off in a week, usually its Sunday. Issues coming in these days are personally checked by me. If I find any issue to be critical, I solve it instantly.

[livepcportal]

Well! I can't complain about xisto support team as whenever I have issued a support ticket to xisto support
I have got good and quick support from xisto support team.

[anwiii]

like i said before. my only issue was when i signed up for hosting with a domain name. i wanted to change my email to my domain so my accounts would be easier to manage. it took over a week to resolve. even though i changed my trap email and my xisto email, there was a change that only admin or support staff could change
sometimes i would get the same response to my issues....like it was coppied and pasted like a form letter.

when it finally got resolved over a week later, over $7 had accumulated. my other 2 issues were resolved pretty quick....within 2-3 days....one of which were the name servers that i never changed but were creating problems.

i think opaque had something to do with correcting my email issue and not nik because after recieving his first and last email on the issue, my problem was resolved.

although this is not a post to discredit trap or xisto by no means, i do still have to question if support is qualified to handle issues. maybe it just needed time to recognize new issues so they could handle them more efficiently in the future. who knows.

what i really felt when being impatient for over a week was that support wasn't understanding my problem and was assuming things or giving advice that went against what i wanted and needed at the time to properly manage my webhosting and domain account which is linked to my trap17 account....even after explaining my email was outdated and i didn't log on to it anymore and was at risk since yahoo had a policy of deleting accounts after 30 days of inactivity.

anyway, i am not displeased with the service, but the service is not perfect just like everything else in life. we have a great service here and i for one can live with the minor scrapes and bumps if i run in to them. i, like others, just need to practice patience and calmness during those times. i can admit honestly that i am not perfect in that area.

do i feel xisto needs more support for the tickets? yes.....just as i feel we need more moderators. trap is still young as opaque pointed out. young, but growing strong. i also feel trap could be twice as big as it is today but also feel when a company grows too fast, it sometimes leads to it's own destruction where a system set a month before becomes quickly outdated.

but trap has survived for 5 years now so it must be doing something right without my input. i have always been thankfull and gratefuill ever since i became a member.

[The Simpleton]

OpaQue pointed out correctly that simply having more support staff won't solve the problem, because each and every member of the support team needs to be intelligent and skilled enough to solve the issues that our members run into. And I know most people who are skilled won't readily take up a job like this because they may be having more opportunities elsewhere. But anyway let us be a little patient about this - the current team is working really hard to solve the problems and only a few take a lot of time to get solved and that too if the member isn't able to explain the problem clearly to the support staff.

[-Sky-]

OpaQue, on Nov 23 2009, 07:01 AM, said:

I understand that adding more support staff will make the response fast. However, I cannot guarantee that Fast Response will mean Speedy solution. Even having a good team still leads to confusion in managing support tickets especially for L2,L3 requests.

Presently, Most of the support requests are solved within 24 hours and its going smoothly. Previously I felt having more staff (mainly L1) was good but I was wrong. It only led to misunderstanding and confusion within the team and the work lagged like anything. Simple issues were delayed by 2-3 days. So now I hire very few but very experienced and good engineers. Our payment gateway + mycent calculations make the Sales part a bit more tedious.

The Support Load currently is managed very efficiently and we are not having any lags. My major priority is the security of Servers and keeping them stable and up to date. We are still a young company and as we grow big, we will surely add more talented people to our team.

We have one day off in a week, usually its Sunday. Issues coming in these days are personally checked by me. If I find any issue to be critical, I solve it instantly.

Ahh, right. Now I understand. Thank you OpaQue for confirming this discussion, and now I know why it takes delays. Thank you.

[The Simpleton]

It was really good of OpaQue to take time from his busy schedule and reply to threads like this - he replied to anwiii's thread about t17 in the future - oh it's always good to see the admin involved

[OpaQue]

I do my best to keep a watch over threads which require my attention. And I enjoy answering them :-) There are also times when I slack off (work work..) and Jim or BuffaloHelp ping me on my e-mail to read those topics :-)

And also like Simpleton mentioned, mojority of the support tickets do not mention all the details clearly. So it takes time to solve them eventually by researching & understanding them.

[The Simpleton]

Quote

I do my best to keep a watch over threads which require my attention. And I enjoy answering them :-) There are also times when I slack off (work work..) and Jim or BuffaloHelp ping me on my e-mail to read those topics :-)

Well I know you do a lot of stuff in the background and you're really lucky to have an excellent team at your disposal All this works out really good for us members

[mahesh2k]

Opaque, is it possible for you or any other support team to update to Knowledge base of computinghost ?. I mean we answer so many threads here with same type of queries and everytime the answer is almost same. So it will be better if we add more questions to knowledgebase. If you want me and some other member can come up with some FAQ and send you the questions and answers. You can update the knowledgebase. I think from knowledgebase of xistosuppoprt site is very good source of information and there is already some useful information there.

Not sure what other people here thinks about this but i think few will come up with some questions and answers to contribute to the knowledgebase.Just let us know if it is possible to update the xistosupport knowledgebase.

[The Simpleton]

Quote

Not sure what other people here thinks about this but i think few will come up with some questions and answers to contribute to the knowledgebase.Just let us know if it is possible to update the xistosupport knowledgebase.

I'll be ready to volunteer for something like that for sure, but do many members actually use the Knowledge base? I can't speak for everyone but I think most people use the xisto site only to manage their products/services. Even for support most people come to the forums first and only then they go to submit a ticket I suggested earlier that we open threads in the forum itself about this matter and this knowledge base idea is a good one too, and doing both would be ideal!

[mahesh2k]

Quote

I'll be ready to volunteer for something like that for sure, but do many members actually use the Knowledge base? I can't speak for everyone but I think most people use the xisto site only to manage their products/services. Even for support most people come to the forums first and only then they go to submit a ticket smile.gif I suggested earlier that we open threads in the forum itself about this matter and this knowledge base idea is a good one too, and doing both would be ideal!

Knowledge base is perfect solution when you encounter some problem and want to solve it by looking up to some FAQ. Now that knowledgebase can solve this problem even for experienced people. I used it whenever i forget about nameserver and some other details. I even link to the pages of knowledgebase when some newbie asks similar question. Besides that if knowledgebase is filled with typical question from forums. Then we can easily link to it while discussing about it on forum or shoutbox(i know shoutbox linking is not allowed but atleast we can ask people to go over knowledgebase).

Solving the same old problems and tons of duplicate thread with same question twisted for the sake of mycent is just filling the forum with repeated content and it gives no benefit. If knowledgebase is added with some content then i think lot of work is done. Besides opening thread about google apps setup is beneficial or worthy to all members ? I mean we answered such queries many times, it's time to make it like FAQ. There are pleny of topic which are repeated and many people here will hardly reply if people just changed the title and asked the same question.So that qualifies for FAQ or knowledgebase.

[TheDisturbedOne]

OpaQue, on Nov 24 2009, 05:50 AM, said:

And also like Simpleton mentioned, mojority of the support tickets do not mention all the details clearly.

And I'd imagine some that you get are along the lines of "Hello sir. I want a websites. Thanks"

[anwiii]

yuck. those would get annoying, i think i would have to copy and past a standard one liner for those dumb tickets....like...."wish ya luck" -ticket closed

TheDisturbedOne, on Nov 24 2009, 04:12 PM, said:

And I'd imagine some that you get are along the lines of "Hello sir. I want a websites. Thanks"

[-Sky-]

anwiii, on Nov 24 2009, 10:43 PM, said:

yuck. those would get annoying, i think i would have to copy and past a standard one liner for those dumb tickets....like...."wish ya luck" -ticket closed

Lol, you'd be an evil one then. Meh, I suppose the amount of support tickets they get it would take time. :/

[OpaQue]

Like Mahesh and Simpleton mentioned, updating the knowledge base is definitely a good idea. Please send the questions, queries etc. to my PM or Mail and I will add them.

Or we can also start a thread here to help members submit questions. :-)

[-Sky-]

Omg, fabulous idea OpaQue! I will start it now.